The Clock of Time

How many rotations to turn back the clock – to halcyon days? And once there, how long could that time be maintained? A day, a week, a month – maybe forever?

It was a house warming gift – way back when at the old house – where the afternoon sunshine glowed onto the wall-clock’s round face, from the wide picture window. The noise of each tick-tock was noticeable at first, until the sound became one with the rhythm of family life. Sometimes it was drowned-out by the young boy practicing on his chanter. Other times, it was muffled by the repetitive plunking on the ancient keyboard of the girl typing her university essay ….

But what the clock also observed were not always sheltered, serene days. Two adults alone. His breath stopped one day, while smoking that last cigarette on the living room sofa. And she, having outlived him by a quarter century, now hobbles lonely through empty rooms, searching – for messages from him, from another plane.

“The clock ticks. The years pass. We age and die. Time is the only thing we can be certain of.” But Dr. Robert Lanza further asks the question – “Does Time Really Exist?” (Psychology Today, Feb. 6, 2012)

Conventionally, time is divided into three distinct regions: the past, the present, and the future. Using that representational model, the past is generally seen as being immutably fixed, and the future as indefinite. Within this instinctive comprehension of time is the philosophy of presentism, which argues that only the present exists. There is still another perspective of time: a philosophical approach called eternalism, which takes the view that all points in time are equally real, meaning: temporally distant objects and events are as real as those currently present to us. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternalism_(philosophy_of_time)

Are there moments in time, to which we can return, not as a memory but as real time, as a real experience? Are there moments in time which are etched into the universal subconscious and which exist on another plane? Can we move back and forth at will, remaining here and there, repeatedly?
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August 6, 1945, 8:16 am, an American B-29 bomber, the Enola Gay, drops the world’s first atom bomb, over the city of Hiroshima. Approximately 80,000 people are killed as a direct result of the blast, and another 35,000 are injured. At least another 60,000 would be dead by the end of the year from the effects of the fallout.

The car turns off Main Street at Dealey Plaza. It is about 12:30 pm, November 22, 1963. Passing the Texas School Book Depository, gunfire suddenly reverberates. Bullets strike the President’s neck and head and he slumps over towards Mrs. Kennedy.

8:46 am, September 11, 2001 Mohammed Atta and the other hijackers aboard American Airlines Flight 11 crash the plane into Floors 93-99 of the North Tower, World Trade Center, New York City, killing everyone on board and hundreds inside the building.

Shortly before 10:00 am, October 22, 2014, witnesses watch Zehaf-Bibeau arrive at the National War Memorial in Ottawa, carrying a rifle. A series of shootings occur killing Corporal Nathan Cirillo, a Canadian soldier on ceremonial sentry duty.

May 22, 2017, at 22:31, the 22-year-old British Muslim Salman Ramadan Abedi detonates a shrapnel-laden homemade bomb at the exit of Manchester Arena, England, following a concert by American singer Ariana Grande. Twenty-three adults and children are killed, including Abedi, and 119 are injured, 23 critically.

At 00:15, Monday, June 19, 2017: One man dies and ten others are injured as a van drives into worshippers at Finsbury Park Mosque, north London. The man driving is yelling: “I’m going to kill all Muslims!!”

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The question has often been asked: What were your doing when a particular event took place?

In the past, and depending on the age of the individual, most could identify the moment and pinpoint exactly where they were, and what they were doing when a devastating incident took place?

What is it that pulls us together on this journey? Does a part of our very being, actually return to the event time reality, as well as to our own event time – at the moment when we think of these happenings? Is part of our being, actually participating on an eternal universal time plane? And why is it that our time travel seems only to recall horrendous world events – rather than joyful celebrations? Is the universal clock trying to tell us something? Are our returns to these distressing flash-backs intended as lessons for humanity, from which to learn? What are we learning from them?

These days, catastrophic images bombard us, moment by moment, on the digital media. Are we losing our empathic connection with each other? Are we becoming more and more desensitised and indifferent?

The materials on these pages whether written, art work or personal photographs are the copyright of Katalin Kennedy and Emese’s Dream Production 2015, unless stated otherwise. If you wish to use any of the material on this site, please seek the written permission of Katalin Kennedy.